Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Elnur Khalygov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cherepovets the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Andrey Pyrkin was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Markos Touroukis was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Kolomna in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
15 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cherepovets lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
9 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Cherepovets is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Cherepovets and Chertanovo in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cherepovets this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Chertanovo left with the points after a 2‑4 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at Cherepovets training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jakub Grzegorzewski is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
23 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cherepovets lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Dmitry Serebryakov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cherepovets the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Cherepovets, and it is not being withdrawn.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
51 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cherepovets lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Spartak Moscow go through and Cherepovets go home, 0‑5 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Cherepovets is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
0-5, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Markos Touroukis was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Cherepovets is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Cherepovets, and it is not being withdrawn.
Andrey Pyrkin and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad28 Sep 2026
8 new faces, and Cherepovets are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
Kirill Kulkov is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
Nobody at Cherepovets will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cherepovets they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Andrey Pyrkin was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Cherepovets training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Markos Touroukis is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Matvey Serov after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Cherepovets will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Daniyal Gadjiev will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cherepovets the goodbyes have quietly begun.
7 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Boardroom14 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 19 signed and 4 gone
That is the business done at Cherepovets until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Krasnodar keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cherepovets this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Markos Touroukis was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Cherepovets ran out of time with Nosta. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Cherepovets, and it is not being withdrawn.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cherepovets they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Everything agreed with Dinamo Barnaul, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Cherepovets asked and Rodina said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Cherepovets training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jakub Grzegorzewski is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Dmitry Serebryakov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cherepovets the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Dmitry Serebryakov has agreed terms with Druzhba for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Cherepovets have gone to Luki-Energiya with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
$18.0K on the table at KDV Tomsk. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Ilja Antsiferov was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.